Melania Trump Made a Speech About Cyberbullying and I Really Don’t Care — Do U?

In a world where anything mattered, Melania Trump’s anti-bullying “Be Best” campaign, launched in May and promptly forgotten about, would be an unequivocal scandal. Her husband, after all, is the psychological equivalent of a bro screaming slurs on Xbox Live, except he’s our sitting president. But the first lady was given yet another opportunity to roleplay as someone who gives a shit at a cyberbullying summit in Rockville, Maryland on Monday morning.

“In today’s global society, social media is an inevitable part of our children’s daily lives. It can be used in many positive ways but can also be destructive and harmful when used incorrectly,” the first lady, whose husband has almost started actual wars on Twitter, said.

As is so often the case in our embarrassingly on-the-nose cultural milieu, the hypocrisy of Melania’s effort is spelled out for us, bolded and in all-caps. Her husband is the Cyberbully in Chief, having recently referred to former staffer Omarosa Manigault as a “dog,” to cite just one example. Pointing out the paradox of Melania’s “Be Best” campaign can seem like a waste of time.

If nothing else, Melania’s latest stunt is timely. Social media harassment is a more prescient issue than ever, and nearly every social media platform is currently undergoing efforts to address and curb the problem. Just last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stoked fears when he announced that the social media platform was considering providing “alternative viewpoints” on the timeline, which many LGBTQ+ users fear could mean being exposed to abusive content.

To state the obvious, harassment on the Internet is a massive problem, and young queer people are among those most afflicted. According to a 2013 study from GLSEN, an organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ youth, young queer people are almost three times as likely to experience bullying online than non-LGBTQ+ youth are, 42 percent to 15 percent. Four times as many LGBTQ+ youth reporting to experiencing sexual harassment online as non-LGBTQ+ youth, 32 percent to 8 percent.

A more recent study in 2017 from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation found that approximately 77 percent of the LGBTQ+ youth who said they were being bullied online also reported being bullied offline. That LGBTQ+ young people must fear bullying on the Internet as well is especially troubling, considering how many of them turn to the Internet for resources, support, and community.

It is incredibly unlikely that Melania’s “Be Best” campaign will address these discrepancies anytime soon, it being a fake lemonade stand of an enterprise with the sole function of making it look like she has something to do. But nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out the glaring hypocrisies of our current political climate, no matter how obvious they might seem, to keep our values intact as we descend into hell.

The reality is, since the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, online harassmenthas skyrocketed, and Melania Trump’s campaign has done nothing whatsoever to alleviate that. It’s almost as if she really doesn’t care. Do you?

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